Condon to direct ‘Side Show’

Retooled version to play Kennedy Center, La Jolla

Bill Condon will helm a revised version of 1997 musical “Side Show” that will play Washington, D.C.’s Kennedy Center and La Jolla Playhouse during the 2013-14 season.

The show’s original creators, composer Henry Krieger and book writer-lyricist Bill Russell, will retool the tuner for the “re-imagining,” to be produced by the Kennedy Center in association with La Jolla. Musical, which played a brief run on the Rialto during the 1997-98 season, is based on the story of conjoined twins Violet and Daisy Hilton, who became a popular vaudeville act during the 1930s.

New version will play at La Jolla during the fall of 2013 and the KenCen the following June with a cast and creative team yet to be selected.

Impetus for the revival dates to 2008, when the Kennedy Center staged a 40-minute abridged version of “Side Show” as part of a production called “Broadway: Three Generations.” The move kindled interest from KenCen prexy Michael Kaiser in a full scale production, according to one center official. Coincidentally, Krieger has been busily creating new material for the title with the help of Condon, who helmed the 2006 film version of Kreiger’s tuner “Dreamgirls.”

Kennedy Center has yielded a couple of Broadway transfer in recent years, including a short-lived incarnation of “Ragtime” and the recent revival of “Follies,” which earned eight Tony noms (winning one for costume designer Gregg Barnes) and just finished a well-received stint in L.A.